I’m feeling little gripey today. I understand that “gripey” isn’t a word, but “gripe” means “to complain naggingly or constantly; grumble. ” And that’s what I feel like doing. It’s kind of like I feel whiny, except with a little more hostility. As an example, today I was working on a project, and someone sent me a project-related email and when I read it, a complete thought floated through my head: “I want to hit this person over the head with a shovel.” That is not my normal state-of-being.
Luckily, I understand that it is inappropriate to hit people with shovels. So instead I will complain naggingly and grumble for a few moments. I usually try to be a force for good karma, but it can’t always be.
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I have a burn on the top of my hand from grabbing something out of the oven too quickly and then ignoring it instead of icing it because I was just too busy to pause. I should have paused. Now it hurts.
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I hate the word “impactful.” I feel like I never used to hear this word, and now I hear it all the time, and every time I do hear it or read it, I feel irrationally angry. Four times out of five, “powerful” works better. Although I perversely cheered myself up a little just now. Since I already had dictionary.com open in another tab to look up the word gripe, I decided to look up impactful, where I encountered this “usage note”: ” Impactful is one of those words that somehow arouse intense disdain, especially among editors and other would-be guardians of English. According to its critics, the word exemplifies ‘bad, ugly usage.’ They call it ‘barbarous,’ dismiss it as ‘a meaningless buzzword,’ and hate it so much that they extend their contempt of the word to contempt for its users.” And I have to say that when I read that, I felt so . . . seen.
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There is currently a song by Charlie Puth with a chorus of “If your mother knew all the things we do,” and it’s just: eww. Stop. I really, really hate it when songs talk about sex vs. mothers. So much that I’ve already written about this, back when I was complaining about “Cool for the Summer.” I don’t know why it makes me so crazy. Partly, it just seems perversely creepy to bring up a person’s mother in this context. Partly I feel like it’s a slander against mothers that we would be opposed to our children ever becoming grown-ups who enjoy sex. I just wish it was never a theme in any song, ever. If my daughters ever become romantically involved with someone who would like to bring me up during intimate moments, I sincerely hope that my daughters will call a halt to the proceedings, toss the perv, and go look for someone more suitable.
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Someone crunched the bumper of my car. Yesterday. I am still so pissed. I have no idea who did it: I didn’t even notice it until Cute W pointed it out, and then I had been parked at Target and Hannaford and downtown in the Stockade and downtown by Jay Street over the course of the day, so who the hell even knows when it happened? But jeez, who does that and doesn’t even leave a note? A$$#0!es, that’s who. It’s like: don’t I screw enough stuff up on my own that has to get fixed and maintained without random strangers messing with my stuff?
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Speaking of screwing stuff up, I completely blew off a vet appointment for Dave today. I knew it was coming, I had the pet carrier handy, I was planning to go, and then I just got busy with work and lost track of time. And then I suddenly remembered the appointment when I finally paused to go to the bathroom. Except then I was trapped in the bathroom, wondering if I had already missed the appointment or remembered it just in time, because I was without access to a clock or a phone. So there was about 45 seconds of suspense when I was hoping against hope that I wasn’t a total loser. But yep. I missed it. We rescheduled for tomorrow and I’ve set an alarm on my phone. And I’m a little cranky about going tomorrow, because it’s a busy day, but I want to get this vet visit over. I was originally going to take both kitties last week, but it turns out that it’s pretty impossible to stuff one cat into a carrier without the other cat escaping that carrier. I need either a second carrier or a second appointment. And I fear that the vet will judge me because Dave is getting chonky. We are trying to keep his eating reined in, but it’s tough to limit him without starving poor Ruth. Okay, enough moaning. I’m going to bed.
